Care About the Environment? Choose Cartons!

I’ve been teaching my girls about recycling and natural energy sources for a while now. We work hard to create as little waste as possible and keep our carbon footprint small. While we’d love to drive a hybrid and live in a solar powered house, that isn’t in the budget right now, so we do what we can. Even little steps like recycling and using paper cartons can help.

We don’t have a curb-side recycling program in our area, which surprises me. I live in St. Louis so you’d think we’d be on the up and up. Over 41 million households have access to carton recycling, and that number is on the rise. In addition, cartons are made from renewable materials – more than 70 percent of the carton is made from paper!

Paper Cartons

Evergreen has taught me a lot about how the packaging we choose makes a difference. I love that you can repurpose cartons for crafts and other fun activities.

The paper fiber contained in cartons is very valuable. Recycled cartons are used to make products such as office paper, wall boards and other building materials. To learn if your community accepts cartons for recycling, please visit www.recyclecartons.com.

Evergreen Packaging cartons have the eco-friendly attributes consumers want: more than 70 percent of the carton is made from paper derived from a renewable resource: trees. Cartons are also recyclable for an increasing number of households. In addition, our cartons are made with renewable energy – over 50% of the energy used to make the paper in our carton comes from biomass.

For more fun, and great tips, like Evergreen on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

Fridge Hunt

Just to see exactly how much we are contributing to the world’s waste problem, I went on a Fridge Hunt! Our fridge is mostly packed with fresh fruits and vegetables, since we are vegetarians. We have a gallon of skim milk, which is in a plastic carton, condiments, and some butter. We have a few paper cartons as well (small milks for the kids, iced coffee for me!). I know paper cartons keep food fresh, and I actually prefer them over plastic whenever possible.

Moving Forward

Moving forward, I want to continue to teach my family to think about what the packaging is like when we choose a food we like. Is this package recyclable? Is it going to end up in a landfill for years and years, taking forever to break down? Is there a better alternative?

By recycling, you are conserving energy and natural resources as well as protecting the environment.

How YOU Can Help

Every carton fact shared, via Twitter, using the hashtag #choosecartons will help raise money for Habitat for Humanity®. For more information, visit www.choosecartons.com

I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Evergreen and received a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

I think it’s awesome that your teaching your kids about recycling even though there is not a program in your community. It will be force of habit for them when they become adults. That can only be a good thing!

I enjoyed reading this . It is very informative about recycling. The diagram is great to show the kids to so they can understand the process more. We recycle alot and I teach my grandson what goes in the bins. We all need to do our share in helping keep our environment as clean as possible.

Thank you very much for this post. I’ve been trying to get my friends and family to recycle everything possible. Some are receptive to it and some aren’t. I reuse just about everything I can get my hands on and my granddaughters have come up with some really great craft ideas. Even the little one can turn any box into a toy or a drum. 🙂

I’m quite surprised you don’t have curbside recycling. That is so frusturating. We are lucky to have an awesome curbside recycling program. We also try to do all the little things to reduce our carbon footprint. Yay, Green!

Thanks for the wonderful information and sites. We don’t have a curbside pick up for recycling either. It would be nice. I collect are plastics, cardboard, paperboard, and catalogs throughout the week then drive it to a recycling center.

we have curb side recycling, however there have been times when our MUA has mixed all trash. they said it was because the recycling plant was full. this was a few years ago however i no longer trust them. So now I try to do more re-purposing then recycling. I love pinterest for that, there are so many great ideas there.

We do have curb-side recycling and I’ve often thought about this issue when buying eggs… seems to me that the paper cartons are much better since I can put them in recycling. I don’t buy the ones in styrofoam packages.